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A timeline of Snap's advertising, from launch to IPO

While we still don't know exactly how much of Snap's $404 million of 2016 revenue stems from advertising, Recode reported that Snap aimed to make $300-$350 million in advertising sales last year, a huge increase from the $59.2 million in ad revenue Snap made in 2015.

To understand just how quickly the company has ramped up advertising efforts to appeal to investors ahead of its IPO, we've listed a timeline of Snapchat's key moments and advertising milestones.

Our thought bubble: Experts predict Snapchat's investments will pay off next year. In September, eMarketer projected the photo startup would gross nearly $1 billion in advertising in 2017, nearly 2% of all social network revenue dollars in the U.S.

Two key investments to watch:

Snapchat Partners, the company's API system, will allow Snapchat to monetize its scale and compete with Facebook and Instagram on targeted ad campaigns. The creation of an API is a significant sign of maturity for Snapchat, given that its co-founder and CEO, Evan Spiegel, initially vowed to avoid hyper-targeting ads, so as not to disrupt user experience.

Snapchat moving from a revenue-share model for premium publishers to an upfront license fee model, where Snapchat would retain 100% of advertising revenues on its Discover platform moving forward, suggests that the company is serious about competing with other social platforms to capture TV ads dollars. TV uses upfront fee models to sell ads programmatically.